New on the Market - Uptown (Sheridan Park), Chicago

By By Chicago magazine

Published May 24, 2007

List Price: $1.79 million

The Property: The developers Tim Lambert and Peter Delp of the Sheridan Park Group are converting a picturesque two-flat in Uptown into a spacious single-family home. Built in 1916, the place will have five bedrooms and a 640-square-foot living room (fashioned from three smaller rooms) with an original Arts and Crafts–style fireplace, as well as other period details preserved or replicated throughout. Complementing those vintage touches are such contemporary amenities as a second-floor laundry room and recessed lighting-which prompts Linda Kanoski, the project’s architect, to joke that, when finished in mid June, the home will feel “freshly historic.” And opening up the 5,300-square-foot living space should give this residence an airier feel: the interior staircase, for instance, becomes a showpiece of carpentry rather than a dim, self-contained passageway to the second-floor apartment.

The building is in the hot western section of Uptown, now known as Sheridan Park. While most of the buildings on the block-a mixture of old and new multifamily dwellings-go lot line to lot line, this place actually has some green space: its lot, which is big for the city, is 50 by 160 feet, while the building is only about 35 feet wide and 100 feet long. Uptown’s music venues and ethnic restaurants are a few blocks east, and Montrose Harbor is within walking distance.

Price Points: The developers acknowledge that their asking price puts them at the very top of the market for this neighborhood. Data from the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois show the highest price paid for a single-family home in Sheridan Park is $1.05 million, for a massive house from 1895, totally restored and a block down from this one. “But there’s a lot of value in all this space and a four-car garage,” Delp says. “We’re very positive about what’s happening in Uptown,” referring to the new Target store planned for Broadway and Montrose, and the other new construction and rehabs going on in this diverse neighborhood. For a buyer who’s willing to roam a bit north of the higher-priced Lake View, this roomy building’s blend of new and old could prove very appealing.